The Waiting Room by F. G. Cottam

Author:F. G. Cottam
Language: eng
Format: mobi, azw3, epub
Tags: Contemporary Fiction, Horror, Maraya21, Literature & Fiction
ISBN: 9781848946149
Publisher: Hodder
Published: 2010-06-24T14:09:43.828000+00:00

Chapter Eight

February 1921

I write this in the early hours. There is a fog about in London, a blind mantle of cloud and soot and river filth that coalesced two days ago and looks and feels as though it might never lift. It is bitter on the breath when inhaled and obliges the people of the capital to grope about the streets as helpless as those without sight. Light cannot penetrate its grimy folds. I am homesick when this metropolitan phenomenon occurs always for the pure air and gentle sunshine of my childhood. It dislocates sound, so that car horns bray with sudden violence and the iron-shod hooves of horses pulling carts ring like a leper’s bell, invisibly. It makes one feel alone and adrift and at the mercy of the great city’s unseen immensity.

Yesterday morning, I received a note from my old friend, Sir Samuel Ross. It was hand-delivered to the reception desk of the Savoy and waiting for me after I had taken my bath. It requested that I meet him most urgently and asked, should I be willing, would I telephone him at his club to arrange to do so without delay. Concern as much as remembered fondness for the man prompted me to do so immediately. The line was clear and he sounded both agitated and frail. I agreed to meet him at five in the afternoon. I confess I would have met him sooner, but he had obligations in Harley Street, he said, that would detain him for the earlier part of the day. I assumed his health was failing. The Sam I remembered was not a man to consult doctors without a compelling need.

I doubt I did a very good job of concealing my distress at the sight of him. He looked shrunken, withered. There were red blotches of high colour on his cheeks and his limbs were stick-like under the baggy folds of his suit. His hair has turned white. I have known him since I was eighteen and yet on a clear day, I might have passed him in the street, so little and vaguely did this bony and enfeebled fellow resemble the man I knew.

He thanked me for coming. Then he began to weep. He told me he is to divorce Mary. I had never seen him betrayed by his emotions before. But my shock at his loss of composure was not as great as the shock I felt at hearing of his decision to end his marriage. I did not know what to say. I could think of no fitting comment. I just nodded. After a few moments, he regained himself and said, ‘I expect you know that Patrick returned to us.’

‘I suspected it.’

‘We were obliged at the outset to keep the matter secret. And then matters developed in a way that made secrecy practicable.’ He looked at me. There was suffering on his face, the memory of suffering endured. ‘Secrecy becomes a habit,’ he said, ‘in the way that a lie grows in magnitude and significance, the longer it is kept.

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